Generation of soluble divalent or multivalent molecular complexes comprising MHC class II or T cell receptors (TCR) is complicated by the fact that such complexes are formed by heterodimeric integral membrane proteins. Each of these protein complexes consists of .alpha. and .beta. integral membrane polypeptides which bind to each other, forming a functional unit involved in immune recognition. While both class II MHC and TCR molecules have stable, disulfide-containing immunoglobulin domains, obtaining them in properly folded form in the absence of their respective integral membrane regions has proven to be difficult (6, 12).
Strategies have been developed to facilitate subunit pairing and expression of soluble analogs of integral membrane heterodimeric complexes (for review, see 4). Initially, the extracellular domains of a TCR (5, 6) or class II MHC (7) were linked via glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchor sequences, resulting in surface expression of the polypeptide chains to enhance subunit pairing. Subsequent enzymatic cleavage resulted in the release of soluble monovalent heterodimers from the GPI anchors. Another strategy facilitated pairing by covalent linkage of immunoglobulin light chain constant regions to constant regions of the TCR .alpha. and .beta. chains (8). Direct pairing of the .alpha. and .beta. chains of a TCR during synthesis has also been accomplished by covalent linkage of the variable regions of the .alpha. and .beta. chains spaced by a 25 amino acid spacer (9) or by linking the variable region of the a chain to the extracellular V.beta.C.beta. chain with a 21 amino acid spacer (10). This strategy, too, results in monomers. In several constructs, .alpha./.beta. dimerization was facilitated by covalent linkage of the leucine zipper dimerization motif to the extracellular domains of the .alpha. and .beta. polypeptides of TCR or class II MHC (11-13). Pairing of the extracellular domains of the .alpha. and .beta. chains of class II MHC has also been achieved after the chains were produced in separate expression systems (14, 15). However, the utility of these probes is limited by their intrinsic low affinity for cognate ligands.
Approaches have also been developed to generate probes for antigen-specific T cells. The first approach used to develop specific reagents to detect clonotypic TCRs was the generation of high affinity anticlonotypic monoclonal antibodies. Anticlonotypic monoclonal antibodies discriminate on the basis of specific TCR V.alpha. and V.beta. conformational determinants, which are not directly related to antigenic specificity. Therefore, an anticlonotypic antibody will interact with only one of potentially many antigen-specific different clonotypic T cells that develop during an immune response.
The development of reagents which differentiate between specific peptide/MHC complexes has also been an area of extensive research. Recently, investigators have used soluble monovalent TCR to stain cells by crosslinking TCRs with avidin after they have been bound to a cell (10). Another approach has been to generate monoclonal antibodies which differentiate between MHC molecules on the basis of peptides resident in the groove of the MHC peptide binding site. While theoretically this approach is appealing, such antibodies have been difficult to generate. Conventional approaches have produced only a few such antibodies with anti-peptide/MHC specificity (36-38). It is not clear why this is the case, but the difficulty may reflect the fact that peptides are generally buried within the MHC molecule.
Two new approaches have been developed to obtain peptide-specific, MHC dependent monoclonal antibodies. One approach utilizes a recombinant antibody phage display library to generate antibodies which have both peptide-specificity and MHC restriction (42). In the second approach, mice are immunized with defined peptide/MHC complexes, followed by screening of very large numbers of the resultant monoclonal antibodies (43, 44). However, the need to screen large numbers of monoclonal antibodies is a disadvantage of this method.
Thus, there is a need in the art for soluble, multivalent molecular complexes with high affinity for antigenic peptides which can be used, for example, to detect and regulate antigen-specific T cells and as therapeutic agents for treating disorders involving immune system regulation.